I just found this website that does what I have long been dreaming about: exploring flavour combinations in a visual form: http://www.foodpairing.be/. Love it!
PS: Andrew, what about another catergory for posts, something like 'other' or 'random' - would that be easy to do? None of the existing categories really fits this post...
I love this site. It also tells you what you can replace a food with. I can't tolerate soy, and I am frustrated with what to replace it with (other than salt) in recipes. I tried the replacement feature and the only replacements were Iberian ham and tomato!
Very interesting. There was a book in our best of 2010 cookbooks roundup with a similar idea, called the Flavour Thesaurus: http://www.flavourthesaurus.com/ - it also looks quite intriguing.
I've created a 'websites' category now since there are so many interesting online food resources we could discuss.
This is by same couple who wrote Culinary Artistry and What to Drink with What You Eat -- two books I liked a lot ... I found the info in the above to be a bit repetitive of what they'd already written in Culinary Artistry so I didn't buy buy it -- but it has a ton of good information.
I own Culinary Artistry too - also because I wanted to use it as a basis for something similar to what they did on foodpairing.be, but gave up halfway through - it was soo much typing!
@Sieburp, that does make sense. Soy sauce is also umami, just like tomatos. Still, only two ingredients? Hmm. What about concentrated stock? Dried shrimps or shrimp paste? Japanese dashi?